That reminds me of when one of the anti-anti-progressive YouTubers I follow posted a clip of their response to a MauLer podcast called "The Assassination of Chris Stuckmann by the Coward Chris Stuckmann" (which was a reaction to Stuckmann's video on Madame Web which he did not consider to be a proper review but more a commentary on how the movie allegedly represents the worst of the studio system) where I saw The Critical Drinker say "Sony probably wants a good Madame Web movie". While this may be true in the broadest sense possible, how naive would you have to be to realize after all the horror stories that have come out about the entertainment industry that executives typically care more about selling crap than about making quality art? Especially considering this particular studio's track record with Spider-Man...oh wait, I guess Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 are too far in the past for people to remember.
Since both movies in question are reasonably relevant to Madame Web, I'll say I broadly had similar problems with both Venom and Captain Marvel regarding how those movies seemed to substitute potential substance either movie could have had for what moviegoing audiences would find bankable regarding the Venom character and the MCU respectively. That's also why I thought the idea Disney had to inflate the latter movie's box office was laughable right from the get go, and even discounting its sequel genuinely bombing hard (apparently it's doing well on streaming though?) I've realized even more holes in that theory as time passes (e.g. the fact Dark Phoenix bombed so hard that Disney reported a financial underperformance for that fiscal quarter in spite of Endgame, so evidently they weren't concerned about covering losses there. Not to mention Disney was in the process of finalizing a $60 billion+ acquisition of another entire movie studio when Captain Marvel came out - inflating one movie's box office wouldn't be so much uncharacteristically evil for Disney so much as it would be uncharacteristically petty).
Speaking of which, The Marvels bombing because Disney couldn't promote it properly (due to the actor's strike) is another example of how stupid moviegoing audiences are since I can fully believe the kinds of people who would normally watch Marvel movies weren't even aware it had come out and only see them because of their event status. And on a similar note, movies like Gods of Egypt (incidentally same writers as Madame Web) and the live-action Ghost in the Shell getting overshadowed by whitewashing controversies limiting the amount of coverage the press was willing to give movies like those also makes it clear how important it is to get the word out. I also probably brought up earlier how I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there was market research showing that female moviegoers had a higher preference for seeing female leads than male moviegoers for their gender. Doesn't help I know at least one instance where a creative was allegedly told to confrontationally accuse people of sexism for not seeing their movie (Elizabeth Banks regarding her failed Charlie's Angels revival), so I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the same was true for cases like Paul Feig and Ghostbusters, Tim Miller and Terminator: Dark Fate (doesn't help he disowned it afterwards), James Mangold and the new Indiana Jones movie, etc.
On a more positive note, the highest-grossing comic book movie last year domestically had a woman and a black guy in the lead. And the highest-grossing comic book movie the year before domestically had a black woman in the lead. Go woke, go broke!
Why do people act like the left is the party of social justice crusaders?